W've tracked this down to an incompatible JVM or JRE. If you are using Debian you may be running the GNU Interpreter for Java (gij). Nexus is not tested or qualified with this unsupported Java runtime. If you are experiencing this error, Sonatype recommends that you obtain a JDK or JRE from Oracle. If you are running on an Ubuntu or Debian distribution the current recommendation is to use Sun Java 1.6.